Iris
by Skyway
Summary: Bellatrix POV, reflecting on her daughter. “We have grown a flower of the dark so tall, strong and lethal…an iris, whose roots are the only to grow through graves. To develop from death nearly two meters, she shall serve us well.”


**_IRIS_**

Summary: Bellatrix reflects on her daughter, displaying a knowledge of flowers and a distinct pessimism.

Disclaimer: Yeah, yeah, yeah…the name and the daughter concept are not exactly new, but this ramble is. Everything else belongs in J.K.'s realm, and whoever else has invested in that.

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My daughter's name is Belladonna. It is quite unoriginal. I was under no sedatives when I bore her; I enjoy pain. My husband, however, managed to get to the mediwitch before they thought I was quite coherent, and named our blessed baby girl Belladonna, in honor of "the beautiful poison she is born of". He always was a cliché. I managed to keep my promise to my younger sister; we'd made a pact to insert this name into the first daughter of the Blacks long ago, with Regelus and Sirius and Andromeda back when that meant something, and my sister had apparently failed, so thus my daughter was christened Belladonna Kamala Black-Lestrange. Under the circumstances; however, it seemed quite inappropriate that I keep to our pact, but I had just spent many hours in labor and a rare show of sentimentalism felt right at the moment.

Lestrange, of course, is not her real surname. She's far too beautiful to be the fruit of my husband's loins. She's lived, during the summers, with my sister Narcissa, who is determined to make sure Donna is not anything like me. The trouble is, Donna's simpering weasel of a father has sent her to Durmstrang from September to August, in some last, desperate effort to make amends with me. He needed it when we faced each other again in the summer of 1995. Now only in the humid months of June, July and August can Narcissa drill into my daughter's head what we had been taught were the primary qualities of our kind—honor, dignity, charm, elegance, grace, style, and when all else fails, sex and vengeance.

The trouble is, of course, as it has always been, Narcissa's emotions. They get the best of her. Donna hears the bitterness in her aunt's voice, directed at Belladonna's birth, at the master I fought for until my imprisonment, leaving the bastard child in Lucius's care, and thus in Narcissa's.

Narcissa knows it's only right, that I'd rather have eaten my toddler alive than sent her to live with that Muggle-loving fool Andromeda.

Donna hates being so far from her England, my darling black amaryllis. Donna hates Narcissa for not standing up for her and practically forcing her to go to Eastern Europe where she barely knows the languages and has to rely on her sex to get anything done properly. Donna longs for an English Christmas; she hasn't had one since Mummy went away. Donna longs for a Scottish spring, rightfully hers and instead she has to look out onto the bleak and gray snow, where not even the bravest flower will rise. The Belladonna Amaryllis is native to Africa, you know. It's in her nature to lounge in the south of France and brown, and play Quidditch in the sunshine and have lingering affairs like her perfume, exotic and simple with a language barrier to complex, somewhere south in the Mediterranean.

Donna hates Draco. She hates how he hides behind his friends and father, although he appears capable of managing on his own, with the exception of the risk of breaking a nail. Oh, and how Draco hates her. He hates her for the privilege of attending Durmstrang, an experience he wouldn't have survived past his first day. My Donna is strong. She's handled it, although she wastes away in its gloomy towers, gasping for air and sunlight, and only to be suffocated by Dark Magic and dusty furs.

Donna hates the life she was born into in the way that only a teenager can. Everything she has been taught she has used against the standards that were set for these skills and talents. Her vengeance will eventually strike out at the other Dark women who sit in the murky corners of their husbands' studies, pretending as if they are so helpless and incapable of doing anything but playing house and shopping and having children and bemoaning their misfortunes as to their husbands' choices of mistresses and their blatant disregard for the sanctity of marriage. These Dark women who are no more than silent gold diggers, not only reaching for money but the power that comes with Dark Magic, a power they are to lazy to possess. They like to have a physical distinction from the Muggles and the magic, but they will not work for it, oh no. They will sit there and idly gossip, rearing their husbands' children, regardless of the identity of their mothers, and creating legions more of the terrible braggarts who don't know the sweat of death; the toil of pain.

Oh, how Donna is inadvertently turning into the mother her aunt and guardian despised. How this neglect of her is only following the same path I followed. Beauty, grace, intelligence, style, charm, honor, dignity, sex, vengeance—everything I have possessed, in addition to the talents of her parents, revered for all of these things but ignored by those she tries to embrace—all but me. I know how to care for my daughter, even locked away on an island too far to mention.

I remind Donna now that she only has a year left in Durmstrang, and how all three of the surnames she carries, the two publicly and the other privately, are far more respected there, and her true lineage is worshipped. She tells me of her regular dates with the talented Krum, and how he admires her beauty above those of the half-breed Veelas, whose mothers tempted the weak Muggles into inducement. Her hair, he whispers, reminds him of the sleeker furs seen at the Institute…its silvery sheen in the perils of darkness only a blatant reminder to Narcissa who Belladonna's father is. She is tall, like her father, and curved, like her mother. The cold expression on her face only warmed by her eyes, which smirk so much better and subtler than her father's lips could ever manage. Her eyes, intriguing as they swirl unnaturally of a platinum glitter of malice—rather, he says mischief, but Donna thinks he knows better. She gives him a lot of credit.

"Marry him, Donna. Marry him now, or you're sure to regret it." I coaxed, my daughter finally in my arms after a tough night. Massacres can drain one so.

"Did you?" She asked simply, the innocent tinkle in her voice omnipresent and forged.

"As circumstances are, your father betrayed me…he betrayed our kind." I whispered, playing idly with the silky strands unlike my own.

"He told our lord that there had to have been someone left when our lord rose again." Donna rarely defends him, so I let it pass.

"Nonetheless, my dearest, my trouble was that I chose a man whose loyalties were not enough in me—and this Viktor sounds as though he'd follow you to death and back—and we need that sort of loyalty." I instructed, rising from the chaise lounge in the dark. My daughter followed my suit, but I couldn't look at her, knowing the mistakes I had made.

"Do you mean to say, Mamma, that there should be loyalty before the Dark Lord?" I slapped her. Slapped her firmly and harshly, as I knew Narcissa would never have had the courage, gall or vigor to do.

"No, Belladonna!" I snapped, the edge in my voice so sharp it cut her like the rings on my fingers. "Your loyalty to the Dark Lord must be so deep that this Viktor follows you into it. I was lucky enough to have two great men, who combined, would have been greater. Your Viktor needs to be so devoted to you his devotion to the Dark Lord is equally as deep as your own. You would follow our lord to the death, wouldn't you?"

I do not expect her to cry. She does not disappoint me. She looks relieved, even, as she nurses her cheek, finally feeling the force that is her lineage, and seeing physically that I am and always will be better than her aunt, and she nods. Those swirling eyes I admit I shouldn't get too entranced with—knowing I would sacrifice her if needed—look at me in utter faith. I see them burn with reprisal and I expect she'll be ridding us of our lesser ranks. That shall be her specialty, I see already, punishing those who have punished us with their stupidity, their disadvantages, and their lack of allegiance in the cause.

"If you do your job right, Viktor will follow him to the death as well." I say patiently after a long pause, and accidentally, I have mothered this child even though I spent and continue to spend the majority of her existence following my master. I am quite pleased with Narcissa's role in this, rare, as it may be that anyone is truly pleased with Narcissa at all.

She has raised a flower of the Dark so strong, so angry; that I dare say my daughter is not only a Belladonna Amaryllis, tall, graceful and poisonous, but also an iris—whose roots are the only to grow through graves. To develop from death nearly two meters, she shall serve us well.


End file.
